Carnival Employee Lora Macneill Of Orlando Was Frugal `Class Act'

DEATHS

January 24, 2004|By Adinah Greene, Sentinel Staff Writer

Lora MacNeill never spent money wastefully. If she gave a Christmas present, she wanted to know it would be used. When the holiday rolled around, she gave the same gift to each of her four children's families.

They all received a 12-pack of Scott toilet paper and an eight-pack of Ivory soap.

Her son Scott and his wife, Sally, preferred Charmin toilet paper and Safeguard soap, so his mother bought them those brands instead.

Lora M. "Katherine" MacNeill of Orlando died Thursday. She was 78.

Born in New York, she traveled with the James E. Strates Shows as its receptionist. She also taught children who traveled with the show.

"Her mother, Isabel, and her father, Paul Hutchinson, who was the purchasing agent and mailman, traveled with the shows, and she and my father met at the show," her daughter, Susan Worrell, said.

"He worked on the bumper cars, and Mr. Strates and his son treated him like an actual family member. My grandfather told my mother to stay away from him and she ended up marrying him."

After her husband, Thomas, died in 1965, the family moved to Sarasota and then to Orlando. There she raised her three sons by herself "and a two-by-four," her daughter said. She described her mother as small and frail though her children were all more than 6 feet tall.

MacNeill loved to spend time with her family but never wanted to interrupt their lives. A comment her children remember is "If you can't go first class, don't go at all." She taught her children: "You're no better than anyone else, but nobody is better than you."

"She was a class act," Worrell said. "That's all I can really say."

She is also survived by sons, Thomas and Paul, both of Orlando, and Scott of Perry; 12 grandchildren; 10 great-grandchildren; and one great-great grandchild.

All Faiths Funeral Alternatives & Cremation Service is handling arrangements.